Wireless communication networks typically include wireless access systems with equipment such as wireless access, control, and routing nodes that provide wireless communication services for wireless communication devices. A typical wireless communication network includes systems to provide wireless access across a geographic region, with wireless coverage areas associated with individual wireless access nodes. The wireless access systems exchange user communications between wireless communication devices, service providers, and other end user devices. These user communications typically include voice calls, data exchanges, web pages, streaming media, or text messages, among other communication services.
In some communication systems, gateways, such as packet data network gateways (PGWs) and serving gateways (SGWs) are used to manage the communications as they are delivered across the wireless network. For example, a PGW acts as the interface between the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network and other packet data networks, such as the Internet or other session initiation protocol networks, whereas the SGW routes data packets between one or more eNodeBs and the PGW.
As more devices attempt to communicate over a network, various PGWs may experience an increase in load. This increase in load may cause poor throughput and latency to the connected end user devices. Further, although some of the PGWs may be experiencing the increase in load, other PGWs within the same LTE network may have available capacity to handle communications from one or more of the wireless devices. Thus, some communications may be impaired despite other communication paths being available to assist the burdened PGWs.
Overview
A Long Term Evolution (LTE) network connects wireless communication devices to an Internet. In the LTE network, a Packet Data Network Gateway (P-GW) exchanges user communications between the wireless communication devices and the Internet. The P-GW determines a number of additional wireless communication devices the P-GW can serve and transfers the number to a Mobility Management Entity (MME). The MME allocates a new wireless communication device to the P-GW based on the number of additional wireless communication devices reported by the P-GW. The MME may redirect one of the wireless communication devices to the P-GW based on the number.